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This morning I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with my girlfriends; tomorrow I'm going to see it again with my family. I thought the scary parts were really scary...much scarier than The Return of the King, which I thought had some pretty scary moments. Things are much more personal here, or maybe it's that Harry is so much younger than Frodo and never volunteered to take the Ring to Mordor in the first place.

I was impressed, thought the film of Goblet of Fire seemed much shorter than it was, loved the pacing, and while visually and thematically I didn't expect to like it as much as Prisoner of Azkaban, I thought it was superbly done. In fact, most of what I didn't like about it, I place squarely on the shoulders of J.K. Rowling's book rather than any decisions director Mike Newell made. The new film did an admirable job combining the look of all three previous films - it had the gigantic Quidditch tournament set and the maze and the sorts of big tricks I associate with the first two films, plus the bridge and the big valley and shots I associate with the third. Considering how little screen time some of my favorite characters got, particularly Snape and Draco, their moments were maximized and I loved how often we saw them in the backgrounds in places like the Quidditch World Cup and the Great Hall.

I have always had an ambivalent feeling about the relationship between bookverse and movieverse. I would never have gone back and read this series had I not adored everything about the first film, but at the same time there have been some omissions that had me smacking my head, and one addition in the second film (Lucius Malfoy trying to use Avada Kedavra) that makes everything that came before seem idiotic. But I haven't had too much trouble picking and choosing among what I like and don't like from the films -- Jason Isaacs is my Lucius, for instance, despite that scene, perhaps more than any other actor is their character for me. And I really like Michael Gambon as Dumbledore even though I know a lot of fans miss Richard Harris. In this movie in particular, his tone is perfect.

I could rant about the marginalization of female characters both in the abbreviated story of the film and in the much longer book, but I think I'll save my feminist ranting for my Star Trek reviews. Heh.

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

-How do you prefer your sci-fi - books, movies, television, games?

-Are you sad about TrekPulse closing?

-What do you think of the new Superman trailer?

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items from late October 2003:

• 'Enterprise' Achieves Ratings Similitude
  Enterprise's "Similitude" earned identical overnight ratings to those for "North Star" the week before, though Smallville on the WB again beat Enterprise by 44 percent.

• Bakula: UPN Failed 'Enterprise'
  Scott Bakula (Archer) laid the blame for the show's ratings troubles the previous season squarely at the feet of the UPN network, saying, "It's been fairly well talked about, but for whatever reasons, UPN chose to spend their money, the majority of their money — because they always argue this whenever we bring it up — on new shows, and they felt that they promoted us sufficiently...it was up to them."

• Berman On Ratings, Stars and 'Similitude'
  "We don't get too excited when the ratings go up and we don't get too depressed when they go down," executive producer Rick Berman declared. "My interest...is to continue to turn out good product."He added that he "had very mixed feelings" about adding Star Trek to Enterprise's title, since "most likely everybody who has any interest in Star Trek knows that Enterprise is a Star Trek series."

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

With no new Star Trek on the air, how do you most often get your fix? Watching Galactica, Stargate or some other franchise entirely 32.1% - (445 Votes) Watching Star Trek DVDs 31.8% - (441 Votes) Watching Star Trek reruns on Spike TV 17.1% - (237 Votes) Reading Pocket Books' Star Trek 9.1% - (127 Votes) Watching your own videotapes of episodes from when they aired 5.7% - (80 Votes) Watching internet fan films or reading fan fiction 3.9% - (55 Votes) Total Votes: 1385

Please vote in our new poll on a Trekkie's Tuesday night dilemma!

Happy Birthday!

Tomorrow, November 19th, is the birthday of Terry Farrell, Deep Space Nine's Jadzia Dax, and Robert Beltran, Voyager's Chakotay. Monday the 21st is the birthday of Alexander Siddig, Deep Space Nine's Dr. Bashir, and Laurence Luckinbill, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's Sybok. And Thursday, November 24th is the birthday of The Next Generation's Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) and Dwight Schultz (Reginald Barclay).

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